This invention relates to methods of organising information. It relates particularly but not exclusively to a method of organising information into a concept network, to facilitate the creation and sharing of knowledge, guiding people and the ways in which they think, communicate and work together, aligning and integrating diverse processes and systems and organising large quantities of data stored on computer systems, and using the new ways of organising thinking, communication, systems and data to achieve improved quality of knowledge, knowledge sharing, decision making and timely, effective action.
The following discussion relates primarily to a business enterprise. It is to be understood, however, that the present invention is relevant to a broad range of different organizations including non-profit organizations and groups of related or unrelated organizations.
An enterprise has a vast amount of intellectual capital tied up in the minds of its people. The success of the enterprise is dependent upon these people being able to work together and apply their knowledge synergistically, to achieve more than can be achieved by individuals working alone. To do this, they need efficient and effective ways of communicating and coordinating their activities. The ability of a group of people to communicate and coordinate is dependent upon the people in the group sharing mental models which are the basis for shared understanding.
Potentially the most important implicit knowledge about an enterprise is to do with the subtle connections between concepts and objects. The invention provides a new way of managing this knowledge, making it explicit and readily shared between people in context.
It is widely acknowledged that enterprises must create a culture of learning and knowledge sharing, but there is a lack of methods to support a sustainable, systemic solution.
Large enterprises are complex, highly integrated systems with a multitude of flows (of goods, information, money, etc.) in a multitude of inter-connected paths. Systems that are set up to manage enterprises typically are built to address a relatively small part of the whole e.g. financial consolidation, bill of materials, email. These systems are usually developed by independent groups of people, implemented as distinct processes, and contribute little towards integrating the whole business. Clearly, because the problems are so large and complex, they have been fragmented to enable them to be solved in part. This has resulted in enterprises that are highly fragmented, their people operate in xe2x80x9csilosxe2x80x9d, and there are enormous inefficiencies at the boundaries of the poorly integrated components.
The problem of efficiently storing and accessing information has existed for a long time. Libraries typically stock vast reservoirs of information in the forms of books and computer databases, and these are typically catalogued by reference to such criteria as author""s name, title and predominant subject matter. Catalogue indexes are useful for locating books about particular subjects, but they are far from perfect when the quickest and most efficient answer to a particular problem is required. To answer a particular problem, a person must first locate all relevant books and then read them; and there is not guarantee that the most relevant information will not be catalogued in a book which has been catalogued by reference to a different subject matter, and therefore not located in the catalogue search.
This problem has been accentuated by the burgeoning of the Internet. The Internet gives a person access to seemingly infinite information resources, but almost no tools for harnessing that information, with the consequence that Internet-based research frequently consumes considerable time and ends in frustration. While highly relevant data may be available on the Internet, extensive searching is often unsuccessful in locating it.
Perhaps the most commonly used computerised method for storing and accessing information is a relational database. A relational database contains a plurality of tables. Each table contains a plurality of records, and each record contains a plurality of fields. Links are established between individual fields in different tables. However, there are only limited areas of information which are suitable for storing and accessing in a relational database format. For the vast majority of types of information, the nature of linkages between different types of information is either unknown or imprecisely defined.
A great strength of computersxe2x80x94their ability to process precisely defined information in a linear mannerxe2x80x94becomes a great weakness when it comes to modelling complex systems, in which the data and links between different pieces of data are not precisely defined and in which information arrives in an unstructured parallel form rather than in a linear form.
Research into the needs of large enterprises around the world has identified nine key areas of need which are generally not satisfied today:
1. Strategic Thinking
What are the mental models that drive our business, give meaning to information and enable us to communicate?
How can we decide what""s important
What connects with what?
How can we increase the effectiveness of the enterprise?
2. Sharing Knowledge
What are people thinking and saying about this subject? How can we share our ideas and knowledge quickly and easily?
What is all the known information that is relevant to this object?
Who is doing what? In relation to this object? In relation to the bigger picture?
3. Sustaining Performance
We need more balanced views of performance.
We need to track the dynamics of the business, seeing performance over time, with important trends, troughs and peaks highlighted for timely action.
We need to keep everything, connected and visible, seeing the big picture and the details.
4. Making it Happen
What are the initiatives and projects we need to focus on?
What is driving the changes?
Where and when do we expect to see business improvements and specific outcomes?
What are all the actions, so I can be sure that nothing falls through the cracks?
5. Knowing Perceptions
What can be done to increase leadership strength in our enterprise?
We need to measure outcomes, including understanding the perceptions of our key relationships.
We need to integrate xe2x80x9csoftxe2x80x9d data with our xe2x80x9chardxe2x80x9d data so we can better understand the whole situation and make better decisions.
We need to gather perception data more frequently, and integrate it into our strategic thinking and performance management systems.
6. Business Intelligence
We need to easily access and analyze our data to produce useful management information.
We need the ability to generate and analyze our budgets, forecasts and xe2x80x98what . . . ifsxe2x80x99 across thousands of objects quickly and easily.
Our systems must be integrated, and produce the right information quickly or flexibly.
We need to trap explanations for data variations, and to have appropriate comments available when needed.
7. Market Intelligence
We need to integrate market research data with our own sales data and the valuable specific knowledge our sales people have about their local market.
Selling many products in many locations poses a challenge of diverse competitors, conditions and systems.
We need a fast, consistent world view.
8. Financial Intelligence
What are the critical areas of the business, and all the legal and management entities that need to be managed?
Statutory and Management accounts must be consolidated, quickly and interpreted intelligently, with meaning.
What are all the rules and regulations with which we need to comply, taking into account multiple currencies, adjustments and intercompany eliminations.
What are the global and local trends and changes that will impact financial performance?
What actions are people taking to address the critical issues?
9. Resource Intelligence
Where and when are particular resources and skills required?
What is the most intelligent allocation of work and resources that balances all competing demands? What impacts will this have on our projects and performance targets?
An extensive discussion of the different known ways of storing and accessing information and knowledge, including the advantages and disadvantages associated with each, is published on the Internet website: www.thoughtweb.com.
According to the present invention, there is provided a method of organising information into a concept network, to facilitate the creation and sharing of knowledge, including the steps of:
categorizing ideas and thoughts into concepts;
creating links between concepts;
categorizing information into objects;
categorizing objects into concepts;
creating links between objects; and
locating information relevant to any object by evaluating direct object links between that object and directly linked objects, and indirect object links and concept links affecting that object.
The object and concept links may be Boolean links (links which either exist or do not exist), but it is preferred that each link have a qualitative value indicating the strength of the relationship between an object and a linked object, an object and a linked concept, or a concept and a linked concept. The degree of xe2x80x9crelevancexe2x80x9d of any other object to a given object can then be assessed by calculating the xe2x80x9cstrengthxe2x80x9d of the relationship between the given object and the other object, both through a direct link between the objects (if any) and through any indirect links (via other intervening objects or concepts).
One or more of the objects or concepts may represent goals for an organization to which the concept network relates, and the organization may have an overall purpose. A concept network is not, of course, limited to a single organization and in the following discussion it is to be understood that reference to an organization includes reference to two or more organizations. Each object and concept within the concept network may be evaluated as having an importance value relative to each goal, and each goal may have an importance value relative to the organisational purpose. In most organizations, different goals compete with each other for organisational resources, and the present invention may be used to allocate resources to the various goals with a view to optimising the success of the overall organisational purpose.
It is preferred that the concept network take into account changes in the network over time. In particular, the following components may vary over time: the purpose of the organization, the degree of existence of any object (objects may be added to or removed from the network), the properties of links between concepts, and the strength of links between objects.
Each person within an enterprise may be categorised as an xe2x80x9cobjectxe2x80x9d, classified within a concept such as xe2x80x9chuman resourcesxe2x80x9d. Different projects, tasks and physical resources may also be categorised as objects, and a person may be categorised as an xe2x80x9caccountable objectxe2x80x9d, being accountable for the performance of particular tasks or the achievement of particular goals. An accountable object may be directly or indirectly accountable for other objects. An action priority rating for an accountable object may be calculated by evaluating: the importance of each object for which the accountable object is accountable, the degree of accountability between the accountable object and each object, the extent to which the accountable object has addressed all issues and actions associated with each object, the time which has elapsed since the accountable object last considered each object, a review cycle duration, and risk and success values associated with each object.
An object which is a task or goal or has a defined purpose may have associated with it one or more performance measures, which indicate the degree to which the task, goal or purpose has been achieved. The performance of a particular object typically depends upon the performance of linked objects, and it is therefore desirable that the performance measurement of an object include performance measurements of linked objects.
There may be success and risk values associated with objects. A success value for an object is calculated from the object""s importance and the object""s performance. A risk value for an object is calculated from the object""s importance and the object""s lack of performance. Both success and risk are relative measurements, in that they are calculated from the perspective of another object. The success and risk values of a particular object from the perspective of a linked object may be different from the success and risk values of that particular object from the perspective of a different linked object.
The concept network of the present invention may be used to bring the most relevant knowledge pro-actively to the attention of the right people. Each person may have an associated personal agent which functions to serve the knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing and decision making needs of that person. In particular, bearing in mind that the person forms an xe2x80x9caccountable objectxe2x80x9d within the concept network, the person""s personal agent determines information which is relevant to bring to the attention of the person based on one or more of importance, performance, risk, success and action priority values associated with each object in the concept network, and the personal agent pro-actively seeks input from the person concerning the status and completion of tasks.